Over 1 million young people are now "NEETs". Here's what should happen next.

Today, former health secretary Alan Milburn released the first report of his wide-ranging review into the crisis facing young people in the UK. Over one million young people in this country are now neither employed, in education nor in training (NEET).

The report sets out Milburn’s diagnosis of the problem ahead of his policy recommendations in the autumn. But it’s refreshing to see a government report identify this crisis as a systemic problem, rather than resort to tropes that pin this issue entirely on young people themselves.

As Milburn correctly says, this government can only reduce the number of NEETs by addressing both the supply and demand side. Government policy needs to consider both young people’s capability to supply labour and at employers’ demand for their work.

At the New Economics Foundation (NEF), we recently conducted research looking at the barriers young people face entering the workforce and how to overcome them. We held three one-day deliberative workshops with over 40 young people in London, Manchester and remotely to hear about their experiences.

The message we heard was overwhelmingly similar to Milburn’s: many young people want to work or train but are locked out by a combination of factors. Many cannot afford to do training, are confronted with the catch-22 of a lack of work experience preventing them from getting work in the first place, have little access to careers guidance, and face high costs and uneven transport options to get to work or training opportunities. These barriers are the most acute for the most disadvantaged young people.

Young people are facing these restrictions despite this government creating significant opportunities for new jobs. The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero has set an ambition to support 2 million green jobs by 2030, while the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government is working to ramp up housebuilding, which should also offer new employment opportunities.

But for too many young people these are just a pipedream, with geography playing a particularly large role in their chance of benefitting from these new jobs.

In a recent report, NEF research found that social-security recipients are more likely to live in areas with fewer vacancies and lower-quality jobs. For example, a region like Blaenau Gwent has just 7.6 job vacancies per 100 universal credit recipients, whereas wealthier areas like Windsor and Maidenhead have almost 58 vacancies. This is the consequence of years of deindustrialisation and falling investment across whole swathes of the country.

This is why Milburn is right to say that this can’t just be a question of the supply side. At NEF we have called for access to skills and training to be opened to all young people, and for employment support to help people into a job – not just write them off for being out of work. But however vital these steps are, they won’t resolve the problem alone.

If the jobs aren’t there, we need investment-led, demand-side policies to importantly increase both the amount and the quality of jobs.

However, on this count, the UK is failing abysmally. Our labour market is more dominated by low-paid, gig-economy and agency work than most European Union countries. Over 10% of jobs in the UK are ​“insecure”, meaning that working hours can vary, wages are low, and workers have limited access to rights and protections.

While job availability is a huge factor for finding work, job quality is a huge factor for staying in it. Upcoming NEF research suggests that workers are much more likely to exit work which is low quality. We need people to enter long-term employment, but the proliferation of low-quality work undermines this.

We need a whole-system change to fix this crisis — one that tackles both supply and demand constraints in our labour market and considers the regional disparities young people face.

Drawing on years of NEF expertise and analysis, here are the five things this government must do to tackle this crisis from the root:

1. This government must seize the opportunity from its record investment in green infrastructure and housebuilding to create jobs. Sectors like health and social care offer opportunities for job expansion too, and any cost-of-living support to boost demand will be crucial to supporting jobs in the everyday economy.
2. To ensure young people up and down the UK benefit from these new jobs, this government must break down barriers to skills and training to open pathways to work. This government has introduced many different initiatives, but they haven’t yet added up to an end-to-end pathway that can be navigated easily. This means support to make entering work and training more affordable, strengthened mentoring, guidance and employer engagement for young people who lack networks, better public transport across the country and ensuring young people on benefits aren’t penalised for accessing opportunities.
3. The focus must also shift to ensuring jobs are of high enough quality that young people can access jobs with progression through work. As a start, this government should implement the Employment Rights Act as quickly as possible and ensure that existing initiatives like the Youth Jobs Guarantee are geared towards high-quality opportunities.
4. This must be accompanied by steps to ensure the social-security system genuinely supports people into sustainable employment that is well-matched to their needs and skills. Previous NEF research has demonstrated that proactive outreach from councils to those on universal credit can increase levels of voluntary engagement with employment support. We have developed a framework where work coaches initially engage with people voluntarily and offer flexible person-centred support.
5. Finally, a child’s early years are critical. Previous NEF research has found that whilst 85% of the richest households will benefit from this government’s full rollout of funded childcare hours, only 11% of the poorest households will be eligible. These are the households with children most likely to be NEET later in life. We have developed a full Universal Childcare Promise to open childcare access to the families whose children will benefit most.

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